This week’s Industrial Materials Patent Scorecard sees a few shake-ups in the top ten, but the top five companies remain unchanged. Corning Inc (Corning, New York, USA), NGK Insulators Ltd (Nagoya, Japan) and Fujikura Ltd (Tokyo, Japan) maintain the top three ranks. Corning and NGK hold a wide lead over their competitors, with Technology Strength™ scores over twice as high as the other players in the top ten and over eight times the industry average – Corning, in particular, enjoys  a strong position on the Patent Scorecard, with a Technology Strength twice that of 2^nd-ranked NGK. Fujikura, on the other hand, barely stays ahead of 4^th-ranked Hitachi Ltd (Tokyo, Japan) and 5^th-ranked 3M Company (St. Paul, Minnesota, USA). Fujikura shows minimal gains in Technology Strength™ over the last period, while Hitachi shows a 20% increase. Although Fujikura has appeared in the top ten on each Industrial Materials Patent Scorecard™ since January 2007, it has been a slow and steady climb from tenth to third place – and Fujikura will need to outpace Hitachi’s growth in order to keep its spot in the future.

For the complete press release please email: cwren@patentboard.com